Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology along the Hudson River

Shifting Shorelines, published in conjunction with an eponymous exhibition, brings together historical and contemporary art, material culture, and environmental science to engage in an interdisciplinary critical dialogue. Through visual, ecological, and material evidence the authors demonstrate the various cycles of exploitation, damage, and reclamation. In so doing, the publication offers a counter reading of the received art historical narratives about the "scenic Hudson" - narratives overwhelmingly grounded on the work of white male artists - and aims for a rich and complex understanding of the legacy, lives, and livelihoods along the river informed by the voices and experiences of a broad range of creators. By focusing deeply on a specific place, this richly illustrated collection of essays offers a story of human and more-than-human history that reverberated across the country on other industrialized rivers such as the Mississippi, Ohio, and Columbia.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Foreword and Acknowledgements - Betti-Sue Hertz
  • Introduction - Annette Blaugrund, Betti-Sue Hertz, Elizabeth Hutchinson, Dorothy M. Peteet
  • From Relative to Resource: Depicting Ecology and Industry along the Hudson, 1650–1850 - Elizabeth Hutchinson
  • Early New York Oyster Jars - Christopher Pickerell
  • Landscape Painting and the Hudson Valley Brick Industry - Ross Barrett
  • Omissions from the Canon: Artists’ Representations of Industry along the Hudson River in the 19th and 20th Centuries - Annette Blaugrund
  • Industrial Harmony: Connecting Industry along the Hudson River Railroad - Victoria Horrocks
  • Hudson Marshes: Archives of Biodiversity, Climate Change, and Human Impact - Dorothy M. Peteet
  • The Geology of Shifting Shorelines - Steven Schimmrich
  • From Degradation to Restoration: Shifting the Hudson’s Storyline - Tracy Brown
  • The Hudson River and Anthony Papa - Anthony Papa
  • Hudson River as Sink: Waste, Pollution, and the Restoration of Nature - May Joseph
  • On the Waterfront Again - Jonathan Weinberg
  • Extraction, Products, and the Environment Materiality in Contemporary Art of the Hudson River - Betti-Sue Hertz
  • Artists’ Roundtable - Betti-Sue Hertz (Moderator), Athena LaTocha, Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, Courtney M. Leonard, Marie Lorentz (Artist Participants)
  • Catalogue of the Exhibition

FEATURED ARTISTS

Henry Ary, Victor Gifford Audubon, Julie Hart Beers, George Bellows, Daniel Putnam Brinley, Johann Hermann Carmienke, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Henry Golden Dearth, Aaron Douglas, Kryn Frederycks, Marie-François-Régis Gignoux, Shi Guorui, Ernest Lawson, John Marin, Alex Matthew, Alan Michelson, Thomas Moran, Lisa Sanditz, Joseph Vollmering, John Ferguson Weir, Worthington Whittredge, Thomas W. Commeraw